


Expected

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't as if they expected him to live</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expected

**Author's Note:**

> Post-EC DLC feels.

It wasn’t as if they ever expected him to live.

Hauled out of the ruins of London, peppered with chunks of the citadel. A crater where a chunk of the city had been. Nothing should have surivived.

But despite the burns and shattered bones and the horror show of mangled cybernetics and nanoweave tissue enhancements left exposed, his heart kept beating. Despite the fact that he had only been able to be identified by the twisted dog tags poking out from the charred remains of his armour, he took ragged breaths on his own.

But the months ticked by, marked with the slow and steady beep of the monitors, the gentle hiss of the life support that helped those ragged breaths along.

It was the best anyone could hope for.

It wasn’t as if they expected him to wake up.

“Yer gonna be uglier than me when you get out of here.” Zaeed said pleasantly, drinking from a flask the hospital had told him time and again not to bring in.

They took turns, the ones who had been left behind. Made a promise that Shepard wouldn’t be alone.

It was the best they could do.

“I know you’re dying fer me t’read you the next installment of “Blasto Goes t’ Hell” Shepard. But..” The old merc leaned forward, watching the slow rise of Shepard’s bandaged chest. “I heard some scuttlebutt I thought you might be interested in. The Normandy’s comin’ home.”

There was a sound, a sharp, loud noise on the monitors and Zaeed turned to look at the spike there. “Goddamnit, Shepard. I knew you weren’t just a batch of meat an’ tubes again. That’s right, you enormous twat. They’re alive. That boyfriend of yours with the eyebrows and the ‘integrity’ you like so much? Kaidan? He’s alive, you bastard, so get up. They’re coming home, and you look like shit.”

It certainly wasn’t as if they expected the first communication from Shepard - after six months and countless surgeries, his body and face still swathed in bandages and trauma units - to be a slow, deliberate, and almost comically obscene gesture.

“That’s m’boy.”

~~

It wasn’t as if they’d expected anything at all.

But much later, Shepard lay with his head in Kaidan’s lap, watching the construction in the city beyond. He had a bottle of beer balanced on his stomach and they sat for the longest time in comfortable silence.

“So, the first thing you did when you woke up was flip off Zaeed Massani?” Kaidan asked as they sat on a balcony overlooking English Bay. The beer was warm because the power grid was unstable and the fridge didn’t always work and the old building always seemed like it was going to fall down around them, but never actually did.

It was tougher than it seemed.

Shepard thought it suited them.

“To be fair, he said I looked like shit.” Shepard rasped. His voice would never be right, and he didn’t care, reaching up to stroke Kaidan’s chin.

“To be fair, you did.” Kaidan said, dipping his head to plant a kiss on a scar across Shepard’s palm. “You got better.” He added at Shepard’s affronted noise. “Shep..”

Shepard curled his fingers against Kaidan’s cheek and smiled. “I promised I’d be waiting for you, didn’t I?” It was lopsided, but the bandages were finally off for good and the last of the bruises from the last of his surgeries had faded to a dull greenish stain against his pale skin.

“And I promised I’d fight like hell to hold you again.” Kaidan leaned down to kiss Shepard’s forehead, smoothing the lines away.

It wasn’t as if they’d expected him to live.

But they’d made a promise.

And, sitting on a balcony with the air cool and the sun overhead? The beer warm and the lips on his skin even warmer?

It was the very best he could have wished for.


End file.
